Did a mock technical interview event tonight at UW (more tips for college CS students looking for a job)

It was actually a lot of fun. Usually when you are doing a real interview, you can’t really take the time or energy to explain to the candidate what they did wrong and how they could improve. Also, I was very impressed with the quality of the candidates. At Microsoft, I interviewed a lot of college grads in the last few years from schools like Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton and other CS powerhouses. Most of those students were pretty weak compared to the students I talked to tonight.

There were a couple pieces of advice I offered to all three candidates. Most of this is only relevant for recent college grads, but some may apply to others as well.

Learn more C++. A lot of CS schools like teaching Java. It is fairly good for teaching some of the fundamentals of Computer Science. However, it is still not very popular in the software industry outside of server software. If you are looking to be a developer at a software company, you will almost certainly be writing in C++ and you will have an edge if you can write good C++ in your interview.

Practice programming problems. Most software companies that I know (including Adobe, Microsoft, Google and Amazon) do whiteboard-style interviews. You will be given a programming problem and will be expected to write code to solve it. You may also be asked a logic problem. There are many web pages that have actual technical interview questions, you should use them to practice with.

Wear appropriate clothing. Unless you are doing software development as part of a consulting company or at a bank or insurance company or something, developers wear jeans. Wear nice jeans, without holes. Don’t wear gym shoes (even cool, expensive ones). Wear a nice shirt. Do not wear a tie or jacket: you will be uncomfortable and will feel out of place. You want to look nice, but comfortable.

Be honest about your abilities. Don’t lie about what you know. We’ll figure you out pretty fast.

It should fit on one page. Unless you were working in the industry for years and years, you should be able to fit all your info on one page.

Your hobbies and outside interests are not relevant. It is resume filler and will have no bearing on if you get an interview or not.

Your job experience outside of the industry isn’t important unless it is relevant to the position you are seeking. If you have relevant or significant full-time job experience (ie: not retail or food service), you should list it. If you were a manager in a non-tech business, that might be relevant if you are looking for a management position, but not an individual contributor position.

Put the most important stuff first. People read top to bottom. If the top of your resume isn’t compelling, people reading it won’t make it to the bottom. When I was younger, I used to have my education at the top of my resume, because I didn’t have as much experience. Now my experience is at the top since I’ve been out of school for 15 years. When I look at college grad’s resumes, I look at the school (do I know it?), then I look at their job experience (have they programmed professionally?), then I look at their skill sets (do they know C++?). Unless one of those things stands out to me, I won’t bother looking at the rest.

List classes taken which relate to the position you are applying for. I don’t need to know every class you took in college, but if I’m hiring a graphics programmer and you took 3 undergrad classes and a graduate seminar in computer graphics, I want to know.

Think about keywords. Most resumes come in electronically now, via a company’s website. There they go into a database. When a position is opened, recruiting will do a search on their database looking for keywords: C++, graphics, windows, etc… Make sure that your resume will be found in those searches.

Target your resume to the position you are interviewing for. This could be a lot of work, but it is worth it. You may not need to change everything, but at least change your objective. If you are applying for a lot of jobs, you may want to make different versions of your resume for different classes of positions. I have three different versions of my resume which emphasize different skillsets depending on what kind of job I am applying for.

Don’t write a wishy-washy objective statement. I’m kinda over the whole “Objectives” thing on a resume. Obviously, you want a job. Everyone wants “a challenging position with an interesting company, utilizing their skills and allowing growth potential.” Yawn. This is the one place where it really is important to tailor your resume to the position you are applying for. Especially, if you are moving from one area (QE) to another (Development).

Use good ideas from other resumes. The Microsoft Word resume templates are not your friend. Everyone knows them now. Luckily, you kids have this thing called the interwebnet which allows you to find a zillion resumes and look at the best ideas from each. Everytime I see a good idea from a resume (a better way of listing experience, a more consise way to describe skills), I see if it is something that can help make my resume better. The actual graphic design and layout of my resume grew over years, incorporating ideas from a dozen other resumes. (Please do not directly steal the design of my resume (I’ll make sure that you’ll never work in this town again), but feel free to incorporate some of the ideas for your own).

Have someone you know, someone who actually knows how to write well, go over your resume. Engineers are not known for their command of grammar, punctuation or command of the English language. You only need to look at this post to see what I mean.

4 Replies to “Did a mock technical interview event tonight at UW (more tips for college CS students looking for a job)”

Very good advice. I have been a contingency recruiter placing C++ developers for 5 years or so. We have come up with some of the same sayings independently, i.e. “you’re not a 10 unless you are Bjarne Stroustrup.”

We are blogging for developers in the link I posted. Please check it out.